Dire Prospects Expanding uranium exploration sparks concern, protests in Quebec http://www.dominionpaper.ca/articles/3226

Here is a region in northeastern Quebec that is renowned as a moose hunter's paradise: a country of blackflies, where outcroppings of billion-year-old granite poke through the veneer of trees and pristine rivers originating in the Labrador highlands tumble over escarpments to empty into the widening St. Lawrence. In small, blue-collar urban centres such as Port-Cartier and Sept-Iles, it seems locals spend every free moment on the land.Lake Kachiwiss has also become known as a point of interest for reasons other than Ski-Doo expeditions.

It is here that Vancouver-based mineral prospecting company Terra Ventures has been drilling the granite bedrock of the Saint Lawrence North Shore for uranium since 2008. The procedure includes boring a 300-metre hole into the ground at a location previously identified by aerial survey as having uranium potential. The contents of each hole are then hauled to the surface and cut laterally into two hemispheres, the way one would slice a carrot. One hemisphere from each core sample—which are typically radioactive—is trucked to a lab, while the other half is left on site for classification.

According to Sept-Iles residents, the prospecting site is not fenced in, the drill holes, as of June last year, were uncapped, and the company has neglected to post signs to warn the population about potential radioactivity. The core samples are stored on open-air racks, exposed to the elements.Moreover, the low density of most deposits in Eastern Canada means commercial mining would likely include an open-pit operation, with vast quantities of granite crystal being ground up to free trace amounts of uranium. The pulverized stone, containing unrecovered uranium and derived substances would remain on site. Marc Fafard sums up the fears of many. “We're afraid we'll be held hostage to mountains of radioactive residue that we'll have to manage ourselves once the companies are gone,” he says.

“It becomes more and more difficult to stop [mining companies] as you let the door open,” says activist Ugo Lapointe on the question of whether a company that already has a permit to prospect for uranium could be denied a mining licence. “It may not be impossible, but we know of no case where that has happened.”Then, last December, a group of 24 Sept-Iles doctors signed a statement warning they would leave the North Shore if prospecting work was not halted.

Though some media outlets criticized the doctors for their tactics, an anti-prospecting demo held in Sept-Iles on December 13 attracted 3,000 people out of a total population of 26,000. The doctors' letter mentioned their specific concern about radon, a radioactive gas linked to lung cancer which is trapped in the bedrock and is released by prospecting. The issue grabbed headlines and was broached in Quebec's National Assembly. “There's a whole debate that needs to happen,” says Loraine Richard, the Parti Quebecois Member of the National Assembly [MNA] for Sept-Iles. “When there are almost 20 doctors who want to leave my region, I stand up and take notice.”